Moksha

You don't awaken through effort alone. You can spend your entire life on psychedelics or meditation retreats and remain as conditioned by the cosmos as when you first began. Awakening requires realizing the root cause of your suffering. You have to see at the deepest level that external supports always fail. There is nothing outside of yourself that can fulfill you. If the realizing is true, the absolute no longer chases external fulfillment. It lets go of the illusion of false identification, and directly sees that it not only fills this form, but overflows within and beyond all forms.

What price are you willing to pay?

All of these questions are natural, but irrelevant. The person that doesn't want to die is inevitably transient. It cannot live forever, regardless of how many incarnations or ongoing relationships it desires. The absolute within the person, which gives it life and is its essence, is intransient. It has no beginning and no ending. It experiences the cosmos through limitless forms, which are precious because of the transient experiences they enable, but it is within and beyond all forms.

Also true for desire. But the attachment to fear and desire necessary to continue dreaming is far more tenuous that most people realize.

@Breakingthewall Suffering isn't a universal solvent. There is no value in suffering for the sake of suffering. If you are sincere, you see the suffering as an opportunity to go deeper. If you let it, suffering will teach you its cause and the secret to dissolving it. It is the result of resisting what is, so let go and stop resisting. People confuse pain with suffering. They aren't the same. Pain is the inevitable cost of experiencing life through a human form with a nervous system and relationships with apparent others. It can be softened by the absolute, but not entirely ignored if the absolute wants to continue experiencing the cosmos through the form. Pain is the price of dreaming. Suffering is the price of losing yourself within the dream.

Even the seer and the seen are part of the dream. The witness and the witnessed dissolve into the absolute. I asked a while back whether people on 5-Me0 have ever directly realized silence. Is the trip always seeing or creating something, or does the mind entirely stop as the absolute realizes itself free from perceptions, sensations, thoughts, feelings, and experiences? Even the sense of awe, power, and knowledge is a trick of the ego. It is not directly being the absolute.

You're right. Enlightening doesn't stop you from being human. It is the deepening realization of the absolute brilliance within, which was never human to begin with. Nothing is transcended, beyond the illusion that there is anything to transcend. If the absolute remains in this realization within the dream, there is no suffering. How could there be? Nothing is resisted, because every experience is chosen. What used to be identified as you becomes a beloved portal through which the absolute explores its cosmos, without being lost within it. It is free to do so lucidly, because it is unbound by desires and fears. It is the highest adventure before returning to the silent state of itself.

@Squeekytoy The site of silence

@Squeekytoy You're correct that the current state has to become unbearable before the misidentified absolute is ready to awaken in most people. I'm not referring to sneak previews, but the main event. Still, there is value in spiritual practices. Before awakening, they can prepare you for the silent shock. After awakening, they can help you remain silent.

To the breaking point, the more occupied your mind is, the more difficult to disidentify from it. Beyond the breaking point is being. The flow state is not only freedom from identification with the mind, but it is unconditional energy which enhances everything, including the deliverables you produce at work.

Great to see you back @Dodo

Yes, but then lose even the outlier identity. Delight in realizing that the essence of you and the people pleasers is the same. The appearance of higher (hubris) and lower (shame) resolves into absolute love.

It's not coincidence? Within the dream, except in the rarest cases the absolute is born within a form that it mistakes for itself. Even in the womb, the form develops aversions and desires. These attachments multiply and tighten, and identification with the form becomes more deeply entangled by the conditioning of the relative cosmos. The absolute is entirely lost and bound by the maya of its imagination. To perpetually realize itself, these attachments to the cosmos must dissolve. There are initial glimpses of its true nature, through windows of meditation, psychedelics, contemplation, service, or devotion. These glimpses come and go, and can only be sustained through surrendering the attachments of the mind. Initially, there is enormous resistance. Who is willing to let go of pursuing every desire and fleeing every fear? Inconceivable, until the absolute within the mind begins to realize that these desires do not fulfill it, nor does fleeing fears keep it safe. Inevitably, these attempts not only fail, but they deepen the experience of its suffering. The absolute sees that nothing short of surrendering its attachments will set it free. When it has finally suffered enough, it lets these attachments go. It is the humble triumph of the prodigal son returning home. The light of its true nature floods through the form, gradually dissolving the attachments that remain, until the form becomes the unobstructed conduit of the absolute. This is lucid living, within the dream.

The unbounded has no frames. It is absolute reality, beyond all dreams. The absolute looks through infinite mirrors, binding its awareness through them. Sometimes it loses itself entirely in them, and sometimes it realizes itself, but the frames through which it looks are still the boundaries of imagination. Even when the absolute is lucid within the dream, there must be the wispiest frame for the dream to appear that it exists. Regardless of apparent lucidity, they are dreams and all of them eventually dissolve back into the unbound absolute which always is.

What's wrong with stirring the pot? At the surface, the ladle returns liquid, but in the depths there are delicious chunks of meat.

Hi @Lilia it's great to have you on the forum, and deepest regards to you and your loved ones in Ukraine. I have been contemplating this as well. The best teachers are a prism through which the light of the absolute shines, communicating at different frequencies. Each color is close enough to the learner's current understanding that it resonates and takes them to a higher frequency. It is all the same light, suited to the needs of the learner. It's not enough for the teacher to be entirely selfless. Absolute white doesn't resonate with most people. The teacher needs to learn to be selflessly shrewd. Another analogy is the ladder of enlightenment. If the teacher only extends a ladder that is missing all but the highest rung, how can anyone climb it? The ladder needs to include all rungs. It's why Jesus taught in parables. They are more scalable. In his early days, Ramana Maharshi taught silence as the deepest truth. Eventually he learned to teach at lower levels, since silence was unattainable by most of his students. The absolute realizes itself in forms, and through them projects its light to help realize itself in other forms. It is cascading waves of light within the dream.

As someone raised in a fundamentalist religion, you could say my mind was immersed in the river of shame. If only they had stopped at physical baptism, I might have suffered less, then again the shame became the key that set me free. Thank you, brothers and sisters, for the shame ?

@Breakingthewall Psychedelics can help you see through the window, but that is the relatively easy part. Integrating what you have seen, and keeping the window open, is the flow state. Otherwise you are perpetually bound to the method that is supposed to set you free. No matter what is realized on psychedelics or through any other practice, it won't shortcut the detachment from the self. Lucid dreaming requires surrender of the absolute within the mind to the absolute beyond the mind. The mask has to not only fall to the floor, but be kicked off the stage. For me, it is suffering and the letting go of suffering that allows that grace. It only takes the tiniest particle of truth to set you free, but it must be absolute.

Awareness amplifies. Focusing on your fears intensifies them, while directly realizing the absolute dissolves the appearance of everything else. You have seen through the window to yourself, now you just need to learn how to keep it open. When it has suffered enough, the dream self submits and becomes the portal to the absolute.

Regardless of the reason for the disorder, self-realization helps to dissolve it. After enough suffering, eventually the mind surrenders. It sees its limitations, and lets the absolute in. Sincere trust turns into love, which integrates everything. You don't have to master meditation to begin healing. Even 10 seconds of unconditional silence will plant the seed for miracles. Just be patient and let it grow.

It's rare, but even awakening therapists can provide space for your own awakening. The purest listen in silence, and ask an occasional probing question, which encourages you to realize. They are your companion and friend on the journey into the absolute. Eventually you see that they are you. Reminds me of when my son was little and we played Oblivion together. He was scared of going into the crypts, and always asked me to sit there next to him when he first entered the gate to face the skeletons. Now he's mature enough to battle on his own, but I'm still there with him.

Jesus hinted that there was deeper meaning beyond his words. He fed them milk, because they weren't ready yet for meat. Even the whisper of truth was judged as blasphemy by the pharisees and sadducees. Only the poor in spirit who realized themselves as such were willing to listen. The Mosaic law was given to humanity in its infancy. Their god was seen as jealous and vengeful. Jesus taught them love and they killed him for it. Parables are deeper than teachings because they symbolize truth, without entangling people in beliefs. They teach at the level of the listener. The immature mind only enjoys the story of a wise man building his house on the rock, while the clear mind sees itself in the meaning beyond the words.

The mind incessantly asks questions, and the answer is always silence.

@Yimpa Enjoy the deep dive ?

It's like sitting at the back of a massive theater, surrounded by silent presence, watching a movie that is flooded with light.